


Mockingbird

by Elucreh



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot does not think he can have love, Mpreg, One Day at a Time crossover, Other, abortion as a serious option, although he's wrong obviously, casefic, intent to abort, minor crossover in later chapters, post-show, pretend intent-to-adopt, real family pretending they are a pretend family, so much cuddly domesticity, so much quiet pining, warning for medical fraud
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-03 01:23:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14557797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elucreh/pseuds/Elucreh
Summary: When Eliot realises he's pregnant, he plans a quick and quiet medical procedure so he can get back to his actual life. But when he meets a couple in the waiting room who have been defrauded by a fertility clinic, he and the team decide they're going to need a real pregnant person to pull off the con. As they thread together evidence to bring down the corrupt doctors at The Love Nest, the pregnancy--and what the pregnancy could mean to him, to their family--gets more and more real.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ME: You cannot tell me Alec "You Can Feel It Kick" Hardison would not be a fucking ADORABLE pregnant person's partner
> 
> ME: But oh my god Parker would hate being pregnant. It would Not Happen, not in a billion years, the way it messes with your body and your balance and your control over your emotions, not in a billion years, not in ten billion years--
> 
> ELIOT "KIDS BREAK ME" SPENCER: and if I were a dad I'd be strict, but fair, I would plan road trips and play soccer and…
> 
> ME: god fucking dammit, now I have to write a thing

Eliot is more than halfway to the clinic when he realizes it’s probably too late for a simple pill.

He hasn’t even taken his temperature in months, not properly, and he hasn’t really charted or tracked it since the US Government was collecting his records and checking his shoeshine—it was the second habit to go. It was fucked up anyway, the way they wanted you to turn yourself in if you got in trouble, and it would screw your career even if you didn’t. He’d never bothered to half-ass it the way some of the guys did, it was easier to track your actual biology and get on with your life than to create halfway plausible variations in your core temperature over the space of months and years. Sure, most of the medics had better things to do with their time, but it was one more hook for the brass to drag you through the muck on if they wanted to.

Not that it had helped, when they wanted to drag him.

He sits at a red light, in the nondescript rental he picked up at the Minneapolis airport on one of the IDs Hardison hardly ever checks up on. He sits and clocks his surroundings almost automatically, the girl with a laptop sitting in a café, the dog walker tugging an elderly Alsatian past a tree. The light changes, and he drives on, giving himself a couple of blocks of thinking before he heaves a sigh and flicks the blinker. Back to Portland, then.

Fuck.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Eliot used to try to kid himself that Hardison kept track, wherever they went and whatever they did. It would barely take one of his damn hard drives to track every ID, use security and traffic cams to idly watch their every move. He’s pretty sure it was even true, for a while, maybe when they had Tara, before Sophie came back, before Nate went inside. When they were a crew, for sure, but not. Not really a family, not yet.

He’d been the one to tell Eliot how to find Sophie in the first place, which is telling.

But now Eliot knows he can say to them, to Hardison and Parker, that he’s leaving town for a few days, it’s personal, he’ll let them know if he needs them, and yes, he will check in every six hours, and yes, his panic button is in his shoe and no, he hasn’t cut out his subdermal trackers. (It isn’t codependence if they really are out to assassinate, kidnap, or otherwise capture/torture you.) He usually brings back local chocolates and a souvenir spoon for Hardison’s Nana, it’s not like they don’t know where he’s been, or like they couldn’t find out at any given second.

But they trust him, now, to come back when they let him go.

Hardison barely looks up when he walks into the office, clearly shooting something with great intensity. After about fifteen seconds he flashes Eliot a grin. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” Eliot says. “Say, uh, where’s Parker?”

“Security convention in town.” Hardison takes a big swig of soda, his eyes straying back to the screen, just a bit. “She thinks they’re cute, you know.”

Eliot nods, maybe a little too slow. Hardison’s gaze sharpens. “You need her for something?”

Eliot hesitates, then nods even more slow. “I think. Yeah. It’s not an emergency. But. Yeah.”

Hardison gives him a long look. “Okay, then,” he says, and hits a few keys that make the screen change to a slideshow of Doctor Who fanart. “You wanna text her, or should I?”

“I’m gonna make snacks,” Eliot decides, and heads for the refrigerator. He can hear Hardison’s phone buzzing as he taps at it. There’s some fresh cream cheese, and figs, and he thinks he has stoneground crackers in the back of a cupboard. He frowns at the condiment shelf and grabs a small block of dark chocolate.

Eliot loses himself in slicing for a few minutes, in spreading and smoothing and shaving. Hardison’s typing resumes its usual steady intensity. He’s thinking about drinks—Parker doesn’t do wine, or beer either, really. He pulls a sparkling apple juice from the refrigerator, and the red left from last night. Hardison is definitely going to need wine. He’s setting out glasses when he. Stops.

He puts back the second wineglass and gets another tankard instead. 

Normally, food for a meeting goes on a big platter on the counter, stack of plates next to it, the silverware in Hardison's intensely dorky brass TARDIS-shaped caddy. The easiest thing is for people to serve themselves, buffet, especially meals. Eliot had to squash down how honored he felt when Sophie took a little of everything, it wasn't often. Nate never did, consistently picky although not consistent in what he was picky about. Parker has rules and her own internal logic, even when she is physically paining him with mustard sandwiches and EZ-mac; he pinned her down over the course of the first two years, and now he knows. But Nate...Eliot could never map out Nate, not even when he kept a surreptitious paper journal for a while. Sometimes he liked pickles and sometimes they made him wrinkle his nose, sometimes he sopped bread in Italian dressing and sometimes he wanted it practically stale it was so dry. Eliot tracked how sober Nate was, his moods, the goddamn weather, but. Buffet. 

It's habit now, more than anything, Alec eats whatever's put in front of him like a true foster, and Eliot made the damn food, and Parker's no mystery anymore. 

Well. Not her appetite. 

Buffet feels wrong. 

Eliot frowns at the shelf with the app platters, fighting himself. Goddammit, he knows enough to listen to a gut instinct in the kitchen same as he would in the field, but it will for sure put the other two on the alert. It's a small thing, it won't keep them down long, a week at most. They're still waiting on Hardison's international contacts for background on the next couple of marks anyway. 

Slowly, he plates the snacks, garnishes his and Hardison's with pomegranate seeds, Parker's with a puddle of blood orange marmalade and celery salt (why, Parker, why with the celery salt.) He could start spatchcocking the turkey for dinner, but it's early yet. 

Eliot doesn't let himself drum his fingers unless he is waiting for instructions and it's really irritating that he hasn't seen Nate in two months and Parker ain't even here and they're not even on the job yet so he retreats into his workout room and starts a round of katanas. Purposeful. 

He near as anything falls over when Parker drops out of the ceiling to his left. 

"Hey, Eliot," she says, with the half-smirk that means she's keeping an eye on him, but happy to see him all the same. "Thought you were gonna be gone a day or two." 

"Yeah, that was the plan," Eliot says, shaking out his neck and shoulders. "Gotta change the plan sometimes, though." 

Hardison comes over and drops a kiss on Parker's shoulder, moving toward the counter where he shows absolutely no surprise at having a plate waiting for each of them, which means he was definitely watching Eliot and not his damn screens. Parker moves to collect the glasses, and they settle on the couch, Eliot facing them from his usual chair. Hardison does him the courtesy of popping a cracker in his mouth and humming a little, a small sound of pleasure. 

Parker doesn't bother. "So."

"So," Eliot agrees. He runs his hands through his hair, trying to find a place to begin. "I went to Minneapolis 'cause there's a clinic I trust there. They're good about anonymity, and there's a defensible hotel." Parker's watching him intently. Hardison has frozen, one hand on Parker's knee. "It was supposed to be easy, in and out, a pill and a couple days to recover. But I think maybe I did the math wrong. I haven't been tracking my cycles, not in years; there's a good chance I got knocked up far enough back that this is gonna need a more serious procedure. I'm going to L.A., to a nurse I trust from my days in the service, to get a better idea what's going on and find out what's necessary. It can't be too far advanced, but it might be enough that we'll have to take a few weeks. We got time, anyway, while we're waiting for Hardison's contacts on the Robinson job, but we gotta talk security while I'm down for the count." 

Hardison breathes out. His hand unclenches from Parker's knee. 

Parker has tilted her head to the side, birdlike. 

"But you're okay, though?" Hardison checks, looking at Eliot with dark, intense eyes. 

Eliot lets his mouth twitch. "I'm okay. A little tired, a little backache. Couple things I ain't telling you about. But I'm okay." 

Hardison rubs a thumb over Parker's knee and relaxes all over, reaching for his wine glass with a hand that's shaking a little. "Don't scare me like that, man, start with the being okay next time." 

"I will." Eliot ducks his head a little, and reaches for his own plate. He pokes a couple of the chocolate curls into place before he picks up the cracker. 

Parker is still watching him with her head tilted, and he raises his eyebrows at her, wondering whether this is a-normal-people-thing-has-thrown-me-for-a-loop or are-you-really-okay-Eliot-or-are-you-goddamn-covering or I-am-incorporating-all-possible-outcomes-and-need-to-channel-Nate. It could, just maybe, be it's-a-human-emotion-I-need-the-Sophie-in-my-head but generally Parker doesn't need the Sophie in her head to cope with Eliot. She and Eliot do okay on their own. 

"You trust this nurse?" she says, finally. It's not what she's thinking, Eliot's pretty sure--he can't always tell what she's thinking but he knows when she's hiding something instead of just incomprehensible. 

He nods, chewing, and reaches for his tankard, letting the crisp apple and tiny bubbles wash through the richness of cream cheese and fig. "I been through firefights with Alvarez, she's good people. She's with a GP now, but she'll make time for me, and she'll understand what I need to be safe." 

Parker nods. "So we'll need a plan if it's more serious. You want to talk about it now, or once you know?" 

"Now," Eliot says, wondering why he feels like he's been allowed to get away with something. That feeling used to bite him in the ass with Nate occasionally, but he's never felt that way with Parker before. "I want a plan. It's one thing leaving you when I can still hop a plane and get back here, but I want someone on site when I might be down for the count." 

Parker makes a face at him. "We're going with you, Eliot. Do you have a safehouse in LA, or should we start looking?"


	2. Chapter 2

Eliot settles into the furthest corner of the waiting room, slumping down and pulling out his phone to pretend to browse the latest Alton Brown cookbook. He balances his elbow on his right knee and breathes deep and slow, filtering out the sounds of computer keys—too soothing—and the Avalor theme song playing in the kiddie corner. He hasn’t seen Alvarez in years, almost a decade now, and it isn’t like the gifts he’s sent for Alex and Elena could be traced back to him. Nobody knows he’s here. He frowns and focuses even harder on his surroundings, shallowing his own breath until he can almost hear the heartbeats of the other bored patients sitting in slightly-battered chairs. 

“Checking in,” Parker’s voice comes into his ear, crisp and kind, and he twitches. 

“Eliot?” and now Hardison’s there, too, and he rolls his eyes as he lifts the phone to his ear so he can talk without looking like a crazy person. 

“Yeah, I’m here,” he says irritably, eyes darting to the corner he can’t quite see without turning his head. “It’s a waiting room. It’s fine.” 

“Roy Chappell?” there’s a middle-aged black woman in scrubs standing in the doorway, with a polite smile on her face. _Isis Samson, 42, three kids, been Alvarez’s nurse since she got her practitioner’s degree._ He can almost hear Hardison rattling off her stats, and he lets out a short, hard breath and stands up. 

“I gotta go,” he says into the fake phone call, and steps forward with a smile and a hand extended. “That’s me, ma’am.” 

He endures being weighed, his height taken, his temperature and blood pressure checked. He gives the vaguest possible answers about what brought him in today, and twitches a smile when she says, “Ms. Alvarez will be right with you.” 

Parker and Hardison don’t speak up again, but it feels like he can hear them breathing, and he sits in the silence with them and doesn’t quite need to jam himself into the corner. He hears Alvarez’s voice before the door handle drops, and slides down off the table to be ready for her. 

“—and tell Dr. Burkowitz I’ll be glad to take his three o’clock,” she says over her shoulder, letting the door fall closed as she looks down at his chart. “Okay, then, Roy—” and then she looks up and her whole face grins. 

“Spencer, what are you doing here?” She opens her arms wide and he lets himself get wrapped up tight in an Alavarez special, her hands cupping his shoulder blades, a funny little side-to-side rock step like just seeing him makes her wanna dance. “Oh my god,” she says, leaning back just a little so she can look into his face. 

“You look good, Alvarez,” he says, feeling the corners of his eyes wrinkle up. She does, too, weight up a little from the last pictures Hardison had of her, her hair in better shape than he’s ever seen it in person. “How’re the kids?” 

“They’re good, they’re good.” She gives his elbows a little squeeze and steps back to look him up and down, critically. “Alex is at UCLA on a baseball scholarship and Elena’s just finishing her thesis.” 

“Yeah?” Eliot can’t seem to stop grinning. 

“Yeah, she kinda crushed this special program, like—no, no, quiet, let me look at you and we’ll catch up later.” 

Eliot closes his mouth obediently and lets her look her fill. She has a mom’s glance, picking up the slight slant to his stance from a three-week-old sprained knee, catching on the buttons of his shirt. 

“You look like you’re remembering to eat, anyway,” she says. “Not sleeping enough, but when did you ever. Nothing obvious, but I’d hope even you have the sense to go to a surgeon and not wait till you could come hear me tell you to go to a surgeon.” 

He rolls his eyes a little and then stills again when she purses her lips and gives him a Look. “Get up on the table, Spencer, and let’s hear it.” 

He hops up, trying not to let his legs swing nervously. 

“Well? It’s something big or you wouldn’t be here, but it’s not critical or you wouldn’t be here either. And something tells me Isis didn’t just hand me the wrong file, which means you wrote down on all my nice legal forms that your name was Roy Chappell.” 

He winces. “Sorry, it—it’s a long story. People can’t know I’m here. Nobody can know I’m here.” 

She gives him another long look. “Spencer, I haven’t seen you in years. You sent graduation presents like my kids didn’t have two hundred Cubans to send them Target giftcards, and you still got a fight coming about how much you sent Elena for her quinces, but I haven’t laid eyes on you since before Elena came out. You think I didn’t figure you were trying to keep trouble from my door?

“You had my back, in Afghanistan. You’ve had my back the whole time I’ve known you. You can be Roy Chappel or Eliot Spencer or Bobby the bobo, if that’s what keeps you safe. But tell me. What do you need?” 

Eliot can’t quite meet her eyes. He takes a long, slow breath and looks over her shoulder at the poster of a cheery white woman reminding him to vaccinate his kids. He looks the cheery lady in the eyes and says, “I’m pregnant.” 

“Oh…kay…”

He can’t help it, his eyes twitch back to Alvarez’s face, and she has that same neutral expression as when Chow told her he couldn’t feel his fingers. 

“I can’t keep it,” he says, simple. “It’s no kinda life for a kid, where I am now, the kinda enemies I make. But I ain’t sure how far along I am, and I done a lot of research but I’m—I wanted—I need to know the best way, the safest way, to be sure this gets taken care of. I was gonna take a pill, I’ve done it before, but I ain’t been trackin’ it, and I need to know it’ll work.” 

“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay.” Slowly, like she’s trying not to spook a horse, like _Amy_ , goddamn it, with an unbroke foal, she reaches out a hand until it’s resting on his knee. “That’s fine, I specialized a little in school when I went back, I can do that for you. We’re gonna do a thing where I ask you some questions, and then maybe a couple tests. That okay with you?” 

Eliot lets his mouth twitch a little. “What if it isn’t, huh?” 

She gives him another Look. “Then you sit here in my examination room until it is. But half the crayons are broken and there’s not enough glue for popsicle stick planes.” 

He can’t help it then, he snorts, remembering the look on Nosey’s face when Muddy and Clem started throwing those dumb planes over the shelves in the field medic tent. She wrinkles her nose at him, like she used to, and somehow his laugh turns into a sob, just a little bit. Her hand firms up on his thigh, grounding him, and 

“Eliot? We’re here, man, we—” 

“I’m fine,” he says, hastily. “Yeah, okay, questions, go.” 

It starts simple, she takes his temperature again, under the tongue this time, listens to his heart. She asks about his symptoms, and he only squirms a second before admitting that his nipples have darkened, he’s constipated, he’s been tired a lot more than he’s used to. “Plus I peed on a stick, and I mean, that was a pretty good indicator.” 

“Do these symptoms match your last pregnancy?” Alvarez asks, tapping notes into her tablet. 

Eliot swallows. “Yeah, that was what made me get a test. My back hurts a little more this time, but also I’ve fucked it up a lot since then.” 

She nods briskly. “It’s different when you’re older, too, I got way sicker with Alex than Elena.” There’s a picture of her with the other nurses from her unit on the back of her tablet, and the same damn “Nurses Call the Shots” sticker she’s had somewhere on her since she first stuck a needle in him. There’s a picture of her family, too, and he blinks at it a minute. “Alvarez—did you adopt people?”

She frowns at him, then flips the tablet over and smiles. “No, no, those are Elena’s fiancées. Well, partners, she still won’t let my mom talk about a wedding—” 

Elliot feels himself welling up again, and his voice is a little strangled. “She, uh, there’s two of them?” 

She draws back a little, her eyebrows going up. “You got a problem with that?” 

“No, no—” he’s stumbling, hasty—“I just, I didn’t know she was. Um. That you were. I mean. You know them? They’re—she’s happy?” 

She’s giving him a funny look, but it’s not hostile anymore. “Yeah, she’s—she’s great. She’s been poly for, I don’t know, four years? She had an open relationship thing in college with a white girl she met in chem lab, and then she met Mol and Fin at some mixer. They’ve been a triad for two years? Something like that. My mom wants to throw a big party, make it official, but they’re not gonna do the paperwork until they figure out what parenting will look like and they know who will need to be on which forms…” 

She trails off, and Eliot doesn’t know what his face looks like right now but he’s going to blame hormones and thank God she can’t hear his heartbeat. He gives himself a little shake and rearranges his features into something politely inquiring. Hopefully not too desperately curious. Her eyes soften again, and she’s giving him a look uncomfortably like Nate when he thinks he knows something. 

“Fin transitioned pretty early, her parents are great, so they’re not sure her sperm will be viable, and Mol doesn’t want to risk passing on her mental health problems, but she wants to stay at home with the kids, so. It’s kind of a mess? Most likely Elena will carry them, but if Fin can save them the money for sperm then probably she and Mol will be on the forms so all three of them have a legal claim to the baby.” 

Eliot blinks hard so the tears won’t fall. He knew Alvarez was good people, but. God _damn_ he wants to attend that three-bride wedding. 

In fact, he says, “You’ll invite me to the wedding, won’t you? I can’t miss that.” 

“Of course!” she says, and he waits for it. “Not that you could be bothered to come to her quinces, even though you’re her padrino, and even though you sent her enough money for about _a hundred cakes_ \--”

“Aw, give it a rest, willya?” he groans. “There ain’t that many kids I get to spoil, and you saved my _life_ \--” 

She snorts. “Sure, you can call it that, Mr. Brings-His-Fists-To-A-Firefight.” And Hardison starts laughing, so he can’t even come up with a good answer to that one. 

Alvarez shoves his shoulder companionably and turns back to her tablet. “Do you have any ideas about the date of conception?” 

_Hands sliding up under his shirt, thumb gripping his hipbones as a thick cock opens him up, just an edge of friction_ and Hardison hasn’t stopped chuckling into his ear and suddenly Eliot snaps, “I’m fine, I’m going off coms,” and pulls the bead from his ear, clicking it off pretty hard. 

Alvarez gives him a look like he’s lost his damn mind, and he can’t exactly blame her. “Uh,” he says, intelligently. 

She quirks an eyebrow at him. 

“My team wanted to be sure I was safe,” he says, wincing. “But—” 

“Sometimes it isn’t anybody’s business. Sure, I get it.” She’s got her horse-whispering tone again, but at least she’s stopped looking at the com like he pulled a roach out of his ear instead. 

Eliot shrugs. 

“So?” Alvarez prods. “Date of conception?” 

Eliot takes a slow breath in and lets it out again. “I ain’t—I’m not sure. There’s been—there’s been a few different chances. Lately. Last coupla months. I don’t much look in the mirror with my shirt off, and that was what made me think of it. No more’n three months, three and a half, I’m pretty sure, but…” 

“But that’s a wide window,” she says, nodding. 

“And I always use protection, but I know that ain’t—that ain’t perfect. So. No saying when.” 

“That’s ok. We’ll get you a scan, get a better idea. Once we know what stage of development you’re at, we can talk about your options. Okay?” 

“Okay.” Eliot gives her a small smile. 

“I’m gonna let Isis stick you with a needle, get a blood test, and then you can go down and wait for an ultrasound. The girl down there is a sweetheart but she’s not always the brightest, so go easy on her.” 

It’s an effort, not sticking out his tongue, but he manages it. 

The blood draw is quick and pretty much painless—of course it is, like Alvarez would hire anybody who couldn’t do the job as well as she can—and he follows directions to the fourth floor waiting room. 

It’s kind of boring, so he clicks his com back on and sticks it back in his ear. He holds his phone up to his ear and waits for a break in the bickering before he says, “I dunno, Parker, I think we should wait until I’m craving chili chocolate before we try for takeout from that café.”

“We can get takeout _now_ and get it again _later_ ,” Parker protests. “What are you doing now?” 

“Waiting for an ultrasound, nothing exciting.” He glances up at the lab assistant, who is fussing with files, and the other patients. “Won’t know what to do next until after the scan.” 

“How’s your friend?” Hardison asks, just a hint of a pout in his voice. 

Eliot chooses to ignore it. “She’s good, kids are good, it’s great. Should only be another half an hour; if we need to schedule something I’ll have to come back, I’m sure.” 

“Well, I still think—”

Eliot breathes out and leans back against the wall, letting the easy back and forth of Parker and Hardison disagreeing about food wash over him. He’s barely remembering to keep the phone up to his ear, humming in agreement—possibly with both of them, he’s really not listening. He curls one finger in and out of his belt loop and lets himself blink twice. 

A tall woman, Korean descent-- _Josie Park, 26, two months into her first technician job with Berkowitz and Alvarez after Shawn Caster quit to go back to school_ \--pokes her head out. “Mr. Chapel? We’re ready for you.” 

He came in old khakis, so comfortable they’re practically sweats, and he shoves them down a little and unbuttons his shirt, trying to not to wince away from her plastic bottle of gel. 

“Oh, I keep it on the machine, it’s warm.” She smiles at him reassuringly and he grimaces back, lets her put the goo on, lets her walk up to him with an unknown metal object and push it hard against his abdomen. It is a _perfectly normal_ medical test. It’s a _machine_ for looking at your _guts_ and—and anyway Hardison is used to talking Eliot through disarming bombs now. 

Eliot focuses very hard on how Hardison just has to know everything and how you let him survive one goddamn little car bomb and all of a sudden he’s spent two sleepless nights and thinks he can stop nuclear attacks and other soothing irritations while Josie Park, 26, prods him with a metal stick and fiddles with the controls on her machine and chatters brightly about how exciting. He’s trying to figure out if Hardison would benefit from drills or if it’s better to just put a paint bomb between Hardison and his orange soda, when she says, “And, yep, here we go,” and a rapid, tiny throbbing echoes out of the speakers. 

Hardison’s breath catches in Eliot’s ear, and suddenly Eliot can’t breathe at all. The heartbeat, so fast, so much faster than any Eliot’s ever heard, faster than Peach’s heart after they ran from the gas, faster than Amy’s heart after that time they fucked in the barn and almost got caught, faster than Hardison’s heart after they jumped—and no, no, _no_ he is not thinking about that, and he sits up with a jerk. 

Josie Park, 26, takes a half step back, her eyes wide, and the damn prod falls away from his skin and Eliot can breathe again, suck in air. It’s ten seconds before he can even try to smile at her, and it feels like he’s not pulling it off. 

“You get what you need for…for Ms. Alvarez?” he asks, and she nods. “Thanks, then.” He swings himself off the table and yanks his pants up, fumbling with the button. 

“You can go back to your examination room,” she says. “Ms. Alvarez will come and talk to you about the results.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> INTRODUCING Penelope Alvarez, who if you don’t know her is from the truly incredible Netflix original series One Day at a Time. She’s Cuban American, a single mom, a war vet, and in the show she’s studying to become a nurse practitioner; this is in the future from that so in this fic she’s got her degree. I really just wanted a nurse that Eliot had HISTORY with but apparently I have a lot of opinions about the Alvarez family future and this miiiiiight become like an actual crossover. I didn’t mean it to happen but it did. Therefore, Imma need alla y'all to pretend that it is even vaguely possible for Elena Alvarez to be just finished with her grad degree a few years after the Leverage finale. Move the Alvarezes back in time eight or nine years, they'll all be happier and safer under the Obama administration anyway. (WEREN'T WE ALL) Crossover will probably still not affect the plot or essential Leverageness but, y'know, be warned anyway. 
> 
> As a side note, while NPs can specialize in obstetrics/gynocology, I couldn’t get a clear answer from the internet on whether they can be licensed to perform abortions. I also didn’t try super hard bc I needed the answer to be YES so just pretend even if you know better :P


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aha, the plot!!!

Eliot flees the ultrasound room without waiting for the wet wipe the tech was fumbling for, and then has to curse himself when his shirt makes contact with the thick, warm gel on his stomach. He’s trying to convince himself that it’s just a _room_ , that he can go back in and laugh at himself a little and apologize, when he hears a tiny sob and quits thinking about the room entirely. 

There’s a young couple huddled in the corner, the people who came out right before Josie called him in. The woman, Latina, early thirties, is curled into the man’s shoulder; tears are running down his face and it’s clear he’s trying to get himself under control, but small sounds are still escaping him. She’s running her hands over his shoulders, his arms; one trembling thumb reaches up to smooth a tear from his chin. 

"We’ll be okay, we’ll be okay," she murmurs. "We’ll figure it out somehow, we’ll—" and she has to break off, choking on her own sobs.

Before he’s really decided anything, he’s across the room, down on one knee in front of them, holding out the tissue box from a nearby table like a peace offering. "Hey there, hey." 

She sits up, startled, and reaches for the tissue on what seems like a reflex. "I’m sorry, I—"

Eliot shakes his head a little. "I didn’t want to interrupt, I just—I was hoping I could help?" 

He can feel his shoulders gathering in, the way his spine curls to make him look smaller, more harmless. It’s instinct, now, the grift, although he doesn’t know where his hand curving over his belly is coming from. Something inside him knows just what will connect with her. With them. 

"Oh," she breathes, and her hand trembles as she reaches out like she’s gonna put her hand on top of his before she snatches it back. Her partner—husband, probably, they’re wearing matching rings—is rubbing his hand over his face. 

"Easy, man." A little bit of Hardison’s accent, a lot less of his own natural White Southern. Fuck, this is no time to be a white guy. "I got tissues, I got you." 

The man snorts, but he grins a little as he yanks out a handful. He’s huge, big thighs, big arms; his wife, huddled up on one of his knees, would look small and doll-like if they made dolls with a fuck-you chin. She’s got to be at least a foot shorter than he is when they’re standing up. 

She’s trying to smile politely, but he’s clearly burst in on one of the worst moments of their life, and it’s not really happening. "We, ah. We got…some bad news." 

*~*~*~*~*~*

"The Love Nest," Hardison drawls, looking over his shoulder at Eliot. He can’t quite spin around like he would at home, since it’s a rented safehouse with no accounting for the need to act like the villain in a bad episode of Inspector Gadget, but he’s smirking just the same as he would over the pub. 

On the projected screen are some pixelated shots of an adobe building with sleek steel accents and a sign on the door like a stylized tree with birds in it. Next to it is a smirking standard professional headshot of a white guy with thinning, yellow-blonde hair. 

"Established in 2007, they’ve been a fertility clinic and adoption facilitation service since they opened their doors. In 2009, Dr. Bernard Peters joined the clinic, and suspiciously rapidly became their shining star. He’s stayed on the cutting edge of technology, on literally the bleeding edge of it. Two years ago, he started claiming he could correct certain specific fertility issues for half or two-thirds the price anybody else could, using his own patented process. 

"Ultrasound says, it works. The images on the screen, the heartbeat—" Eliot doesn’t let himself flinch—"all the tests come back like a parent’s pride and joy. Lotta people pour their life savings into these kinds of treatments. If you can’t adopt, or if you want a biological kid, being able to afford it five years early looks pretty good." 

_I've been saving for a Gleason operation since I was twenty-two. We've been saving for it since before we were married—we eloped, so we could have a baby before I'm thirty-five. We were so close—two more years. Dr. Peters…we paid him everything we had._ Eliot swallows against the memory of the look in Dani's eyes, the way Caleb hadn't even tried to stop the tears from leaking down his face. 

Abruptly, the images clarify into a razor-sharp image, a wider shot of the building. Parker appears at Eliot’s elbow—she must have been out scouting, the network has picked up the images she’s taken to replace the shitty ones from the clinic’s website. The Peters headshot changes to a slimy, fatherly smile as he holds the door for a woman walking into the clinic. 

"The problem is," she says, walking into the room and plopping down next to Hardison, "the ultrasounds, the tests, they're all faked. They're recordings. He recommends they use the clinic's OBGYNs, their equipment, as long as possible, bilking the parents for as much as he can." 

Hardison picks up the thread again. "Dani knows your Alvarez from a support group or something, so she told her about her pregnancy, the lack of symptoms. And Alvarez is _sharp_. She told them to come in for an ultrasound, her tech, her equipment. They actually caught on pretty early. There's stories on the web, not many, they haven't found each other. But enough to put it together. They're not the first, but they were maybe the luckiest." 

_We'll never. We'll _never_ get the money together before it's too late now. Another thirteen years?_

"But the fact is, the clinic is covered, the doctor is covered. You gotta sign a two-inch stack of paperwork to get this procedure going. Early miscarriage is pretty common, there's no way of proving that there never was a baby. They're…stuck." 

_It's not the money. It's the hope._ Eliot unclenches his hand from the hem of his shirt. 

He looks a Parker, who is looking back at him steadily, at Hardison, who is searching Eliot's face for something. He thinks again of Dani's thumb rubbing a tear off Caleb's chin. "So what's the plan?" 

"We're going to need a reason to get in there," Parker says. "They're a high-class fertility clinic and adoption facility, they keep the records locked down tight. People can be defensive about fertility issues, and a lot of birth mothers require anonymity. And there's no way this doctor is the only one there who knows this is going on, either. We can get evidence—numbers, at least, documentation of the fake procedure, maybe more…but we need a reason to walk in, all three of us, and a reason for at least one of us to peel off in the middle of the appointment." 

She stops. 

Hardison doesn't say anything. 

"Yeah," Eliot says, finally. 

*~*~*~*~*

"So you're still good for the pill for another week." Alvarez has her hand on his knee again. Eliot nods mutely. 

Nine weeks. That. That's too specific. He was definitely not drunk enough seven weeks ago, because now he knows exactly how he got knocked up and that was on the list of things he didn't want to know. 

But the pill will still work, for a few more days. A day or two off his feet and they can go home, to their real life, he can tweak the appetizers for the brewpub and they can head for Chicago, start taking down Robinson. 

This doesn't have to be a thing. 

"I'll write you a prescription," Alvarez is saying. "There's a pharmacy in the lobby. Drink plenty of water and take it easy for a couple of days—" she stops, because Eliot is shaking his head. 

"I'll call you to schedule a procedure," he says. 

He can do another few weeks. 

He can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, notes: I borrowed the fertility scam from an episode of The Mysteries of Laura, because while the internet is rather grossly overinvested in suggesting that if you have sex in a country mostly full of people of color then the Asian/Latinx/etc. woman you have sex with will probably try to claim she’s pregnant as a scam (I am learning all kinds of horrifying misogynist, racist things about humanity in the research for this fic), it was light on scams people might try to _run_ on a pregnant person. Mysteries of Laura can be found on Netflix if you’re curious, the first season is a pretty good procedural. The scam is lifted from S01E10, "Mystery of the Fertility Fatality."
> 
> I’m maybe taking this a little too seriously and I’ve cast my OCs: [Gina Rodriguez](http://www1.pictures.livingly.com/mp/cyUXVySZLoKl.jpg) as Dani and [Winston Duke](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/sized-hdm029918esqwinstonduke2352-1519165031.jpg) as Caleb (because I need them to be in a romcom together), and [Thomas Haden Church](https://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/photo/thomas_haden_church.jpg) as Dr. Bernard Peters, in case you were wondering.


End file.
